Franchise / LeapFrog

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LeapFrog Enterprises is a toy and publishing company based in Emeryville, California, founded by former Cooley LLP attorney Michael Wood in 1995 after coming up with a way to aid in his son's reading lessons. The company specializes in educational toys and electronics. They are primarily known for the LeapPad, an electronic talking book device, the Leapster - a handheld gaming console with the processing power that's about equivalent to a Game Boy Advance, and the Fly Pentop computer, which somehow gained popularity in the business and computing world.

They are also well known for the LeapFrog Learning Friends, characters originally created for materials to be used with the LeapPad, but has since been spun-off to be used in various other toys and even animated DVD releases.

In February 2016, they revealed that they were nearing bankruptcy due to less than stellar sales, as kids moved away from physical learning toys to learning software on tablet devices, as well as inability to compete with their own LeapPad and Epic tablet devicesnote A number of factors came into play despite the Epic receiving critical acclaim from parenting groups - applications sold on LeapFrog's in-house app store sell for way more than on Google Play and elsewhere as well as the requirement to buy gift cards to get credit to buy the apps if you don't live in the main 6 countries Leapfrog has a presence in, draconian region locking/restrictions keeping parents overseas from accessing certain services, apps or videos, and a watered-down hardware combined with lack of proper Bluetooth HID peripheral support contributed to the Epic's tepid reception in some circles. Also, it forces apps to run in the UK locale for those living in the "other" region, including forcing the UK keyboard- when the most recognizable keyboard in the world is the US one, and forcing locale-aware apps to display UK English spelling and play UK audio, without giving the user a chance to customize said settings. They were purchased by rival toy manufacturer VTech shortly after.

Please note: Tropes unique to the DVD series have been moved to the Western Animation section. This page lists tropes that applies to the toys and the company's products in general, although tropes that crosses over into the DVD series are allowed.

LeapFrog products exhibit the following tropes:

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Products in general

Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: Zig-Zagged. Averted with the Learning Friends themselves, but in their universe they have purple caterpillars, purple fireflies, green and purple dogs, purple octopi, and more. And then Edison, said purple firefly, joins the main cast just as everyone that is not Leap, Lily and Tad is Put on a Bus...

Art Shift: The LeapFrog DVDs initially mis-portrayed Edison as a more normal yellow firefly, as he was purple in all the toys and LeapPad books. He regained his purple color since Let's Go To School. Also, the character designs in the DVDs has noticeable simplifications when compared to the book. And well, there's a major crossover with Art Evolution with the major character design change between A Tad of Christmas Cheer, and Let's Go To School!.

Ascended Extra: Edison. Originally introduced as a minor character in a LeapPad book, he was Put on a Bus for a bit, and then brought back in time for A Tad of Christmas Cheer, and then upgraded into a core character.

Expy: Both Jump Start and LeapFrog feature (or, in JumpStart's case featured) similar-looking firefliesnote the JumpStart version's pre-2000-or-so incarnation doesn't look like LeapFrog's Edison, but the post-2000 incarnation does named Edison who are best friends with frogs, and a cat named Casey. The question is, who's Expy-ing off whom?

Furry Confusion: We have Dot and Dan, anthropomorphic dogs. Then we have Scout and Violet, zoomorphic dogs. Then to prove that it's in the same universe, have Dot and Scout appear together in the ClickStart's intro cutscene. Then take the Mind Screw up to new heights when Scout and Violet are portrayed as anthropomorphic in some of the toys as well.

In-Name-Only: The LeapPad Explorer is a Tablet device with a color LCD touchscreen, and shares absolutely no similarities in operation with the LeapPad of old.

Pink Girl, Blue Boy: The Purple Girl Green Boy variant is used with Violet and Scout respectively. Also, many of their products comes in either blue and green or purple and pink.

Rearrange The Theme Tune: Many Modern Toys by LeapFrog use a rearranged version of the LeapPad Learning System start-up sound.

Region Coding: LeapFrog is the latest to join this madness. Especially egregious because not only do they have a monopoly over the app market, but IP blocking is as flawed as it comes (being prone to false positives and can be bypassed by the more desperate). And oh, they let you see apps available on other markets, just blocking you from buying the said app. Seeing highly desirable apps and videos but not being able to buy them is a painful tease...

Retcon: A cross-media example- In the earlier DVDs, it's established that Tad, Leap, Lily and the rest of the Learning Friends all live in Alphaville. Now, it's established that Scout and Friends live in Shapeville, given the name of the park and how it's walking distance from their home. This completely throws out the continuity presented by the Clickstart learning computer, which states that Scout is Tad and Dot's dog, indication that the current Scout and Friends DVDs is set in a different universe from the Learning Friends continuity.

Same Language Dub: The UK releases of the toys have a "British English" sticker to indicate that it's for the UK market, and toys with the sticker have a British accent compared to those sold in the US.

Spin-Off: The LeapPad was spun off into various different sub-models, and some of them are incompatible with each other. This also applies to the Leapster (although all but the Leapster Explorer are cross-compatible) and the Tag (the Tag is compatible with Tag Junior titles, but not the other way around).

Suddenly Voiced: Currently Zig-Zagging for Scout. He does not talk in his first appearance on the ClickStart educational computer, but the next toy that features him, the eponymously-titled My Pal Scout, has him voiced. And then he does not talk when he made his animated DVD debut in the The Amazing Alphabet Amusement Park and Numbers Ahoy DVDs, but said DVD has extras that are not part of the story where he sings. And then, comes the Scout and Friends videos...

Put on a Bus/Chuck Cunningham Syndrome/Ret Gone: Everyone that is not Leap, Tad, Lily or Edison when Let's Go To School was produced. Heck, shortly before that point, it seemed that the entire Learning Friends crew was put on the bus in favor of keeping only Scout and Violet around. Thank goodness they had the sense to at least let the core kids off the bus before it moved off. But for the rest of the characters, they were just gone like that and have never been mentioned since. Although some did re-appear in LeapPad books that were republished and reworked for the Tag, they have never been seen in any newer toys and new Tag titles, and are not in the DVDs since A Tad Of Christmas Cheer.

It appeared that Leap, Lily and Tad were also put on the bus after Numbers Ahoy.

Now (2014) it seems that Scout, Violet, Penny and Eli are put on the bus...

Dummied Out: A number of features present in commodity Android but not on the Epic, like the recent apps menu, lock screen and several others, are in the firmware all along, albeit with references to them being removed off SystemUI and Settings' resource files, or commented out in configuration files, preventing certain apps such as replacement home screens from being installed. They can however be accessed through third-party utilities.

Hello, [Insert Name Here]: LeapFrog put out several toys that can be customized to say the owner's name. Some uses a cartridge programmer and flash cart that can be used to program the owner's name in, then inserted into certain toys. Others like the Scout and Violet My Pal plushes, LeapTop toy computers, and Story Time Pad toy tablets, can be programmed to say the owner's name via USB cable.

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